Kicking it {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? Here's a reminder that robots have their own World Cup event, and it's a cracker. LOL. Hey, it's at least improved from 9 years ago. 🤖

Send this to a friend who'd ref a robot football match.

In This Open Letter

In accounting, wrong answers land you in real trouble, which is what most chatbots excel at, so this founder built one that catches what the others miss…

Most accountants can't rely on your general bots. Case in point: Wits researchers gave five top AI models the final-year Certificate of Theory in Accountancy exam questions, and four of them failed miserably.

Thing is, they argued their wrong answers as convincingly as the right ones. But, of course, when tax penalties and professional liability are on the line, confidently wrong is still wrong.

Reality check

It's not a biggie for large firms that can simply stroll over to the technical department to research the hard cases. But most of the country's accounting runs through solo and small practices, which don't have that kind of backup.

They really need it, though. As founder Leandro Da Silva learnt when he became the family accountant after qualifying. A job he did without AI support for many years, until one day he came upon a question he honestly didn't have an answer to.

With no one to ask, he built the AI solution every accountant needed…

The startup giving one-man practices a technical department

CA Assistant is an AI for South African accountants, auditors and tax professionals who need an answer they can stake their name on.

Its engine, Pacioli, is built to be slower and more thorough on purpose. Ask about a "long-term asset", and it knows the standards call that a non-current asset, then pulls the figure from your connected Xero. It's the kind of link a general chatbot misses.

What makes it work is discipline about sources. Pacioli only reads from verified, sandboxed material rather than the open web, so it isn't stitching answers from scraped data. And because it's handling client books, each client is sealed off from the next, so one firm's data can't bleed into another's.

With a solid user base, the average user hitting the platform 21 times a month, and some professional bodies already checking it out, Leandro hopes to get their stamp of approval soon.

We're watching this space…

If managing your cloud services has been complex and costly, there's a practical solution: Become a Cloud On Demand partner by completing a short form on their site. A named account manager will walk you through onboarding (account setup, catalogue access, billing configuration and your first provisioning) so you are transacting quickly rather than wading through paperwork.

What you get is leverage that you would otherwise need a much bigger company to negotiate.

On the commercial side: Predictable pricing, a 7% Azure cost reduction, flexible 30-day payment terms, and access to global vendor relationships without direct agreements or minimum commitments. On the technical side: Azure specialists and solutions architects on tap for migration, security and optimisation, plus 24/7 support for when things break.

And then there’s the reach: Listing on the partner-channel and public-facing marketplaces puts your services in front of new customers, backed by co-funded marketing and enablement to help you actually close them.

Whether you are a reseller, a managed service provider or a software business, the model is the same: You focus on customers and innovation, and they handle the infrastructure, billing and complexity behind the scenes.

📊 SA Grows, But Optimism Hits a Five-Year Low. The SA private sector growth nudged back above 50 in June (50.5, up from 49.6), thanks to resilient hiring. But business optimism sank to its weakest level in nearly five years. That's very SA.

🎮 Google Bets $1m on African Game Devs. Google is launching its first Indie Games Fund for Africa, $1m split across 10 studios, with grants of $50k to $200k plus mentorship. Applications close 31 July. SA studios, this one's for you.

🚁 CPT Drone Pilot Smashes World Record. Cape Town's Luke Bell flew a multirotor drone for 4 hours and 21 minutes, shattering the Guinness World Record. His first attempt hit 3.5 hours, so he optimised even further for the record. Lekker.

✈️ Fractional Jes Land in SA. SoterJets has launched Africa’s first commercial aircraft fractional ownership programme: Cost certainty, operational simplicity, already fully subscribed on the first aircraft. Is this the NetJets moment for SA business aviation?

🚀 Global Reach Built. World-class futurist John Sanei has the insight but needs consistent global visibility. So FDC turned LinkedIn into a positioning engine that's driven 6.7 million impressions, 31k+ profile views and steady inbound demand from global audiences.*

🌍 Going Global? Finance Isle of Man has partnered with four of SA's leading business networks, including the one you're reading right now. Over 35 SA companies already have a footprint on the island. They're here to help you get there, too. Find out how →*

* From our partners. Find all the best service providers for your business in our Founder Stack.

Pointing an AI at the company wiki can give you slow, vague, half-right answers. So we got an SA operator who rolled out Claude across an 80-person company to show us how to write docs that the AI can read fast and answer accurately.

And it turns out, there are 4 specific steps to write docs your AI can actually use.

☝️ Send this to a founder who connected AI to their Confluence and got mush.

BTC hit a 21-month low, then bounced. Bitcoin fell to $58'200 early in the week before climbing back above $61'000 after Fed Chair Warsh said inflation risks had eased. ZAR pairs ride this move directly, so it's felt locally with zero translation needed.

A rand-backed stablecoin is quietly gaining ground. ZAR Universal, the rand-backed stablecoin launched in February, kept building institutional traction through June. The IFWG's analysis of local currency-pegged stablecoins shows a lot of promise.

Direct stocks on Binance: zero to $1bn in 30 days. Binance launched direct stocks on 1 June, giving users access to 7'000+ US stocks and ETFs alongside crypto. In 30 days: over $1bn in equities acquired and close to $3bn in trading volume, with 73% of users coming from emerging markets. Converting between a bStock and its underlying equity is free, instant and works both ways.

Disclaimer: Digital asset prices can be volatile. The value of your investment may go down or up and you may not get back the amount invested. You are solely responsible for your investment decisions and Binance is not liable for any losses you may incur. Not financial advice. For more information, see our Terms of Use and Risk Warning.

Last week, we showed you Articulate Vision's spatial sales platform on Apple Vision Pro, asking whether it's the future or an expensive flop. The verdict? Ask again in five years…

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🚀 Early, this is where everything's headed (19%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 👓 Only once the glasses are lightweight (15%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💼 Enterprise, yes; consumer, never (19%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🪦 Expensive flop, let's be honest (12%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🤷 Ask me again in five years (35%)

Led By Her: SA to Ireland, 7 Jul, Online: South Africans who've made the move share the truth on visas, cost of living, culture shock and whether Ireland is all green fields and Guinness. Hosted by The Lekker Network. Register free.

Getting Better Results From Google Ads, 17 Jul, Online: Chantelle unpacks when Performance Max makes sense, what to watch and how to stop wasting budget. Founder Collab members only. Join the Collab.

The Blind Man With Vision: Hein Wagner, 28 Jul, CPT: Born blind, Hein's completed the Ironman, run the Antarctica Marathon, sailed Cape to Rio and set the Blind Land Speed Record twice. A keynote on perspective, resilience and what happens when you refuse to let circumstances define you. Sky On Long, 27th floor. Get tickets.

Building & Scaling Venture-Backed Businesses, 30 Jul, Stellenbosch: 150+ founders, investors and operators at Workshack. Panel on raising VC, plus Renier Kriel sits down with Brett Commaille (Hlayisani Capital) on decades of investing in SA startups. Get tickets.

🧩 Tool to Try: PhoneGuide turns your phone into a self-guided, offline audio tour of any city.

🌍 That's Interesting: Halle Berry was given a fake script for X-Men: The Last Stand that centred entirely on Storm to trick her into signing on. The original director quit when he found out about the trickery. Hollywood gonna Hollywood.

🗡️ Next Level: This person forged a blade from a 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite and then etched a pattern onto it.

🎨 Wow Site: Doodle Guesser is a free draw-and-guess party game: Create a room, invite your friends and roast each other’s drawing skills.